Dark Enchantment Read Online Free

my mind is no longer my own. His handsome face haunts me. I touch my breasts, feeling the stirrings of strange new yearnings in them. I run my hand across the flat of my belly, aware that it is another’s touch I really need, but not truly certain what it is I would want him to do
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    There is a noise at the shutters
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    Hand on my heart, I retreat in fear. Someone has climbed to my balcony from the garden below. I see his figure framed against the night sky as the doors are thrown open and I cry out in recognition. It is the soldier – Herman
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    Into the room he strides, pain and desire in his wounded eyes. He loves me, he declares. But he cannot have me; I am too far above him on the social scale. He is only a lowly officer in the Tsar’s army, and I am the granddaughter of a countess. If only I would take pity on him! But no – he must never think that he might be able to attain my love, so he has come to bid me farewell. This night he will kill himself, so that the agony of lifelong separation might be avoided
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    I beg him to reconsider
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    There’s a noise at the door – a knock, my grandmother’s voice. She’s heard noises from my room and wonders why I am still up. Herman dives back behind the louvered shutter as she enters, and I try to look nonchalant. The Countess chides me and orders me back to bed, and as I pretend to acquiesce she departs
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    In half-a-dozen strides Herman is across the room, kneeling at my bedside, seizing my hands in supplication. I tell him he must go. If he goes it will be to his death, he declares. If only he could know that I love him as he loves me, that the same fire burns in both of us. If I would kiss him – if I would only yield my lips to his – if I would only answer his passion with mine, then he would live in everlasting joy
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    He’s on the bed now, his arms around me. I protest, but feebly. He is strong and insistent, his eyes and his voice holding me captive as much as his hands. I arch beneath his taut body, my breasts heaving against his chest. He has one hand in my hair now, and I can’t tell if he’s holding me up or bearing me down. Though I try to wriggle free, every movement I make somehow opens me further to his caresses and works me further into his embrace. He wants me. He cannot bear to let me go. He must have my love now. And as he bears me to the mattress and moves upon me I yield helplessly before his passion and my own, sliding my arm about his neck and sinking back as he takes full possession of me. His lips hover over mine
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    The curtain falls on Act 1
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    That moment almost hurt. The transition was wrenching: all at once I was no longer virginal Russian noblewoman Lisa, but back in my own somewhat older body. My hair wasn’t golden but a light brown – it just looked blond under the stage lights – and it wasn’t the dashing obsessive Herman whose weight was upon me but Elliot Wells, the lead tenor.
    We held our places, trying to control our breathing, because it’s not totally unknown for a stage curtain to go bouncing up again so it’s best practice to freeze in place for a while. He was heavy on my thighs and the heat of his body was making me tingle. Not that I was objecting. The stormy passion of the scene, the soaring vocals of our duet, the fearsome intensity of his eyes – I’d hardly been acting as I portrayed Lisa’s arousal. I wondered again at the perversity of the director’s decision not to let us kiss before the curtain fell. Over and over during months of rehearsal, this same music, played on a tinny piano, had brought us to this climactic point without ever permitting any resolution.
    It’s easy to get lost in a passionate role. There’s a reason why actors and singers aren’t so good at monogamy.
    Stagehands hurried on all around us, grabbing the props. Beyond the heavy curtain applause was still raining.
    ‘OK?’ said Elliot, still not moving, still not taking his eyes from mine. Between the tight rows of his braids his